Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that his prosecutors will file criminal charges against anyone crossing the border without authorization, rather than releasing them to await deportation. That legal escalation will tear apart more families with children, which now constitute 40 percent of people detained by American border agents.
Read MoreThousands of vulnerable kids may be headed to Texas, which is already overwhelmed with problems in its own child-welfare system. The Trump administration is scouting three military bases in Texas as possible shelters for migrant children in its new get-tough plan to separate them from parents who’ll be prosecuted for illegally crossing the Mexican border.
Read MoreIn Austin, Texas, an 18-month-old toddler is sitting in an immigration detention facility. He’s probably crying, with only strangers in a strange place to comfort him. He doesn’t want the strangers, though. He wants his mother, but his mother is herself detained, in another facility 120 miles away. They were torn apart by brutal tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE):
Read MoreThe Trump administration is making preparations to warehouse migrant children on military bases, according to Defense Department communications, the latest sign the government is moving forward with plans to split up families who cross the border illegally.
Read MoreThe New York Times published an op-ed – coauthored by CGRS Director Karen Musalo and actress and activist Jane Fonda – drawing attention to one of this Administration’s latest assaults on asylum seekers: the Attorney General’s intervention in domestic violence asylum case Matter of A-B-. The United States has affirmed its commitment to protect women fleeing gender-based violence. But the advances we have achieved together over the years are all at risk. Attorney General Sessions intends to use the case as a vehicle to undermine protections for domestic violence survivors and countless others fleeing persecution at the hands of so-called private or non-state actors.
Read MoreA new directive that cracks down on illegal immigration could further stress immigration services and infrastructure in Houston, including detention centers, children’s shelters and access to legal aid.
Read MoreAs the Trump administration and its allies in law enforcement and border patrol continue to escalate tensions at the U.S. – Mexico border, thousands of children are caught in the crossfire. Children of immigrants fleeing to the border are being used as bargaining chips in political games that place allegiance to political party and ideology above the rights and welfare of human beings.
Read MoreEvery day for the last month, Aneth’s 3-year-old daughter has asked her the same question: “When is Daddy coming home?” She searches every room in the house for him and wonders why he wasn’t there for her birthday. Aneth cannot bring herself to tell her youngest child that her father was detained by immigration authorities in what advocates say was the biggest workplace raid in a decade.
Read MoreIn Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, where most families have been crossing the border in the last five years, the Border Patrol reported 462 cases of fraud among children and family migrants and prosecuted 60 cases this fiscal year, which began in October. Agents have also separated parents by detaining and charging them with illegal entry in federal criminal court and placing children in temporary shelters.
Read MoreWhite House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly came off as rather callous in an interview with NPR after being asked about separating young children from their parents at the border. NPR’s John Burnett noted that many felt that a policy of pulling children away from parents if families entered the country illegally was “cruel and heartless.” Kelly dismissed that concern. “I wouldn’t put it quite that way,” he said. “The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever.”
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